Food for Thought: Culture and Cuisine in Russia and Eastern Europe (1800 to the present)

A Symposium at The University of Texas at Austin

Friday, Feb 7th 9:00am-5:30pm & Saturday, Feb 8th 9:00am-6:30pm

This event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. NO REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.

Lunch and dinner events, however, are for participants and invited guests only. Please contact Mary Neuburger at <burgerm@austin.utexas.edu> for information on meal events.

The Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies and the Center for European Studies at The University of Texas at Austin are hosting a two-day symposium on the culture and history of food in the Russian Empire (and Soviet Union) and its successor states, as well as “Eastern Europe” broadly defined. Drawing on a wide range of sources and disciplines, speakers will explore how patterns of food cultivation, preparation, and consumption are embedded in local, national, and trans-national cultural configurations. We hope to celebrate and reexamine the history and culture of the region through the lens of its food. Click HERE for poster. For more information, check out the conference blog.

Ronald D. LeBlanc is Professor of Russian and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire and Center Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. The author of "Slavic Sins of the Flesh: Food, Sex, and Carnal Appetite in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction" (2009), Professor LeBlanc has written numerous “gastrocritical” studies on food and eating in the works of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Goncharov, Bulgakov, and Olesha. Click HERE for keynote flyer.